Your argument against the high prizes in the church might be put strongly
thus:--Admit that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, that
some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimulating
and rewarding transcendant merit; what have you to say now, after centuries
of experience to the contrary?--_Have_ the high prizes been given to the
highest genius, virtue, or learning? Is it not rather the truth, as Jortin
said, that twelve votes in a contested election will do more to make a man
a bishop than an admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets?--To all
which and the like I say again, that you ought not to reason from the
abuse, which may be rectified, against the inherent uses of the thing.
_Appoint_ the most deserving--and the prize _will_ answer its purpose. As
to the bishops' incomes,--in the first place, the net receipts--that which
the bishops may spend--have been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure;
but, waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be correct, I
should like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue in any one
year by the late or the present Bishop of Durham, or the present Bishops of
London or Winchester, compared with that of the most benevolent nobleman in
England of any party in politics. I firmly believe that the former give
away in charity of one kind or another, public, official, or private, three
times as much in proportion as the latter. You may have a hunks or two now
and then; but so you would much more certainly, if you were to reduce the
incomes to 2000_l_. per annum. As a body, in my opinion the clergy of
England do in truth act as if their property were impressed with a trust to
the utmost extent that can be demanded by those who affect to believe,
ignorantly or not, that lying legend of a tripartite or quadripartite
division of the tithe by law.
_May 31. 1834._
SIR C. WETHERELL'S SPEECH.--NATIONAL CHURCH.--DISSENTERS.--PAPACY.----
UNIVERSITIES.
I think Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very
effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done
the thing so well.
* * * * *
The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for
the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere
spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny
over mind and body;--or else would fall abroad into a multitude of
enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience
can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a
national church--a political establishment connected with, but distinct
from, the spiritual Church.
* * * * *
I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters
may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound--too providential.
* * * * *
Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an
unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and
introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is
essentially extra-national;--it affects, _temporally_, to do that which the
spiritual Church of Christ can alone do--to break down the natural
distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and
peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the
political independence of other nations.
The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy. The
Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old coenobitic
establishments of England were converted--perverted, rather--into
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that
Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.
_June_ 2. 1834.